Police launch new ‘999Haters’ service to combat trolls

Now that over 50% of UK policing is focused on social media complaints, senior officers are set to invest in a first response system to combat internet ‘meanness’, aggressive emoticons and anyone ‘dissing Kanye West’. Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, has agreed for a phone line to be installed specifically for the needs of weepy teenagers who feel that their facebook page has insufficient ‘likes’, who manage to annoy existentialists by using the expression ‘IRL’ and that they are incapable of finding the ‘off switch’ to their media device.

Antisocial behaviour or threats online are now taking priority over actual abuse – where a ‘snarky hashtag’ is seen as more hurtful than ‘a kick to the balls’. One distraught internet user said: ‘I once experienced a twenty page thread about who was better – Dr Who or Ghandi. Well, duh?!? Tennant or Mahatma? Only one of those is uber-skinny, has fought for world peace and has seen Billie Piper doing it with a Dalek’.

Six thousand officers are to be retrained to spot flame wars, disrespectful selfies and insincere use of ‘ROFL’. While hardened criminals will be sent to correctional facilities to be re-educated with Miley Cyrus’ hearts-cons, pictures of her dogs and inspirational quotes about sideboobs. Police chiefs are confident that once virtual crime has been solved, we can more on to the serious matter of tackling fictitious crime – such as who killed cock robin, who put the ram in the ramalamadingdong and who filed the tax returns for Starbucks.

One officer explained how they were tackling Haters: ‘Law enforcement agencies are working hard to combat misunderstood sarcasm, spurious medical statements and bad grammar on Twitter. We’ve also put together a ten bullet-point plan to combat unnecessary Facebook lists.’ Legal advice suggests you do not need to be face-to-face with an assailant for a crime to occur, which is why there is now a warrant for the arrest of Russell Brand for molesting the UK, England’s sportsmen for false advertising and George Osborne for grand larceny.

If I would give a bit of critique it would be, as the tagger may be trying to hint at, is that it is very reliant on the rule of three structure. I know Wrenfor uses this tool a lot (4 in today's FP) but there are 8 in this one. Makes it feel a little formulaic. Maybe structure joke a little differently